Long have I been a fan of video games. growing up in the 90s and the 2000s, most of the games I had access to were mostly text-based. Games like Final Fantasy and Pokemon required an impressive level of literacy to progress at the time. I’m certain that this had a positive impact on my reading level, but it had a life-changing effect on my little brother. He was years behind in his reading level, but after inheriting an old Pokemon game of mine, his reading level exploded to the point where he was years ahead. The Video Game Model proved a necessary tool to enable my younger brother, and he benefitted profoundly from it. Ever since this experience, I’ve paid close attention to how much I learn from video games.

Nowadays, literacy is less of a requirement for gameplay, as games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and even Minecraft, focus more heavily on mechanics than text-based interactions. It’s important to note that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We all know the educational utility of Minecraft, but if not literacy, what can video games teach us? I remember complaining to one of my teachers about having to learn arbitrary reactions in 1st-year chemistry. He scoffed at me, asking if I knew the name of all 140+ champions in League of Legends. Of course, I even knew each of their abilities…. and League of Legends champions have at least 5 abilities each. It really hit me then that my brain was absolutely capable of learning and retaining profound amounts of arbitrary knowledge. Since then, I’ve tried playing games that have the ability to build on knowledge that is more applicable to the real world. Games like Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption have a surprising amount of historically accurate content, but my recent favorite has been GeoGuessr. The amount of geographical knowledge I’ve garnered while trying to improve at GeoGuessr is absolutely ridiculous. This is definitely a game I’ll bring into my classroom.

Mark Rober is a prolific Youtube edutainer with a seriously impressive resume. This man designed components that got launched to Mars on the Perseverance Rover! Almost more impressively, his Youtube channel is an endless source of entertainment drenched with inspiration for learning. Mark presented a compelling Ted Talk, highlighting the effectiveness of gaming with respect to education. It’s undeniable that video games have a unique way of compelling people to execute tasks, and the brain takes care of the rest.

There’s an interesting quote that’s considered an axiom of game design. “Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.” (source) Humans have a fascinating capacity to over-optimize a game, often ruining the fun of it. I know that I’m guilty of this as well, spending hours going through card combinations for Magic the Gathering, a wildly popular card game with surprisingly deep mechanics. The learning required to pick apart the mechanics of the game and the tenacity needed to sift through thousands of combinations to find obscure combos that made mathematical sense still floors me.

But I did it. Why? How can it be that people who are so reluctant in school can be so obsessed with video games that are often even more demanding than school? Is it simply the fact that it’s optional? Or is it that one feels ownership of the sense of achievement, as the game is a non-personal entity that judges your performance in a manner nothing like that of a teacher grading one’s work. It feels like this train of thought leads to more questions than answers, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.

 I dream of a future where the entirety of academic education can be conveyed entirely by games. Our potential, as humans, when properly motivated is ineffable, and video games seem to be the mainline to unfathomable achievement. How then, to utilize it? Unfortunately, this seems to be a distant dream. The public education system is still too steeped in the industrial age influences of our past.

Thankfully, some opportunities exist to incorporate games into education. Prodigy and Minecraft Education Edition are exciting examples of games with potential in schools. The fact that these games are marketed as “educational” is a potential downside, as kids will certainly catch wind of that and eventually gravitate towards games that are strictly entertainment-based like Grand Theft Auto and Among Us.

These educational games are good stepping stones though. Maybe one day we can offload education entirely into games. Until then, I will continue to keep my fingers on the pulse of the gaming industry, watching wherever it can intersect with education.